Hi Everyone,
I am a learning support teacher who is very interested in early childhood education. As you can well imagine, I deal every day with children who can not read. I am a firm believer in the research findings that children have difficulty reading because they are not exposed to phonological awareness experiences before beginning the more formal reading activities. Phonological Awareness is all about sounds; segmenting,blending,deleting and changing the the order of sound sequences. Following this is the knowledge that that spoken words are made up of individual sounds that are placed together to make a word. listening to sounds,rhyme,syllabification,word awareness and sentence awareness are all part of Phonological Awareness.

Thanks for the translation, Theodore. I wondered if I had stumbled across a dictionary definition since the post seemed to be missing body, conclusion, and point. Not exactly the work I would have expected out of a learning support teacher.

"The greatest sign of success for a teacher... is to be able to say, "The children are now working as if I did not exist."
- M. MontessoriProud non-member of the HSLDA

Dear Lilly and Thodore,
I am sorry that you were both confused by my post. I am new in this forum and didn't realise that I was far too technical.
I hope that I do a better 'job" this time!!!!!! Lilly, I was only offering some well researched results, please don't be nasty.
Listening to sounds with very young children begins with listening to every day noises so that the child can learn the concepts of same and different, first and last and sequencing.There are a lot of fun activities that can be used to support parents in this area.
A more indepth approach to sounding then follows; clapping syllables in words, listening and identifying rhyme etc.
Associating sounds with letter names is the last activity to be addressed. This association is called Phonics whereas the initial sounding that I have discussed is called Phonological Awareness.
Research clearly identifies the fact that some children are experiencing difficulty with reading due to deficits in Phonological Awareness.
I hope that this information is a little more reader friendly.
Ann Foster
Australia

ann foster wrote:Dear Lilly and Thodore,I am sorry that you were both confused by my post. I am new in this forum and didn't realise that I was far too technical.I hope that I do a better 'job" this time!!!!!! Lilly, I was only offering some well researched results, please don't be nasty. Listening to sounds with very young children begins with listening to every day noises so that the child can learn the concepts of same and different, first and last and sequencing.There are a lot of fun activities that can be used to support parents in this area.A more indepth approach to sounding then follows; clapping syllables in words, listening and identifying rhyme etc.Associating sounds with letter names is the last activity to be addressed. This association is called Phonics whereas the initial sounding that I have discussed is called Phonological Awareness.Research clearly identifies the fact that some children are experiencing difficulty with reading due to deficits in Phonological Awareness.I hope that this information is a little more reader friendly.Ann FosterAustralia

I wasn't trying to be nasty, I was honestly confused as to the point of the post. I view message boards as a way to communicate with others, and when I run across something that seems to stop in the middle without an indication of it's meaning(on the board), then it is quite confusing. Are you sharing this information to encourage interest? Perhaps you could give a few fun games and break down the steps to reading in a more personable way, like : I'm studying to be a teacher, and I wanted to share some great pre-reading activities! followed by the activities you wish to share.

It wasn't that you were too technical, I'm quite familiar with the reading process and all that it entails. It was that it seemed like you stopped midthought without really getting across what you wanted to share.

"The greatest sign of success for a teacher... is to be able to say, "The children are now working as if I did not exist."